De Young spotlights Tiburon artist John Zaklikowski's techy assemblages

JOHN ZAKLIKOWSKI has loved taking things apart since he was a boy. It just took him a few decades to figure out the perfect way to put things together.

It was worth the wait, however. His assemblages have led him to be artist-in-residence at the M.H. de Young Museum this month and an exhibit, "Culture and Physics Collide," that runs through Feb. 2.

Not bad for someone who almost threw out the gewgaws and doodads that dominate his art.

Zaklikowski had been collecting defunct electronics — computers, stereos, remote controls, telephones — taking them apart and cherry-picking the parts that spoke to him. After some 15 years, he had a rather substantial stockpile of visually compelling "gems" that filled up his Folsom Street studio and only a vague idea of what to do with it all.

"I got so sick of moving this stuff around," he says.

Then something clicked. He began loading a 6-foot plywood square with hundreds of high-tech stuff like video cards, circuit boards, hard drives and motherboards, and the not-so-high-tech — kitchen gadgets, staple guns, tools and telephone cords.

After months of working on the piece, "Brainiac," he got compliments from people coming through his studio. He knew he was on to something.

"I am very good at taking things apart, and just a little bit better at putting them back together," the longtime 60-something Tiburon resident says with an impish smile. "I made about 25 years' of work in about 6½ years. It was an absolute explosion."

What he wanted to explore was the intersection of physics and art. Physicists and artists, he says, both seek to make sense of the world.

"I'm not a physicist, I haven't trained as a scientist, I've been following and reading a lot on the development of particle physics since I was a teenager and I still keep up with it," says Zaklikowski, who clearly enjoys telling stories and has a deep interest in and knowledge of Tibet, philosophy and, one quickly gathers, a lot of other things.

He's particularly enamored with physics and particle-physics detectors. "They're kind of gorgeous in themselves," he says.

One piece, "Collider Detector at Fermilab," is a meticulously detailed replica of the Tevatron detector at Fermilab, which was the largest particle accelerator in the world until it was decommissioned in 2011. But Zaklikowski's piece incorporates Parmesan cheese caps and a luo pan compass, a Chinese feng shui tool.

"Urbanism is the central idea behind these as well as science, technology, actually literature and music are involved in these as well. But the science and technology are easy to grasp," he says.

He takes a certain pleasure in making the practical impractical by rendering them useless as he gives them cultural value.

His art, which has a decidedly metropolitan look while also evoking the serenity of mandalas, has been called "nothing short of jaw-dropping" by Helium magazine, "breathtaking" by the Dogpatch Howler and something that would be appealing to "everyone's inner eclectic artistic engineer" according to Flavorpill.

"Zak's large-scale work and use of recycled materials creates a completely new and interesting environment that engages our visitors in conversations about the intersection of art and science," notes Dana Morrison, de Young public programs educator.

Not all of his artworks are artistic replicas of particle detectors, however. One piece looks like a Steinway piano; one piece actually

is a piano, albeit reconfigured and adorned with computer components, cellphones and musical instruments; and one is his son's old twin-size bed frame filled with thousands of Legos, also his son's, and other assorted tchotchkes.

Naturally, kids are drawn to the bed — a gift for his son on his 13th birthday — and he welcomes them playing with the pieces and rearranging them.

Zaklikowski says he isn't making a statement about technology. He admits he's ambivalent about it.

"While technology is fascinating, it's extremely important, it has reconfigured the world quite simply, but the corporate structure of all these companies that make this stuff is pretty much similar to the corporate structure of most corporations, which has a great deal wrong with it," says Zaklikowski, who has two kids and a stepdaughter.

He feels similarly about cities, which he considers at once seductive and awe-inspiring while also problematic for their inhabitants and the Earth itself.

But don't ask him to explain what his art means. Art, he says, is pointless. That's why he makes it. Like the quote by composer John Cage he includes in his artist statement, "I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it."

Vicki Larson can be reached at vlarson@marinij.com; follow her on Twitter at @OMGchronicles, fan her on Facebook at Vicki-Larson-OMG-Chronicles